Obama warns Karzai on U.S. withdrawal

President Barack Obama warned Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday that he’s ordered the Defense Department to plan to withdraw all American troops by the end of the year, raising the stakes in the standoff over the two nations’ postwar security agreement.

Obama told the Afghan president by phone, the White House said, that he has ordered the Pentagon preparations because Karzai has dragged his feet for too long in waiting to sign the bilateral security agreement he negotiated with Washington and earlier put before a traditional advisory council, which endorsed it.

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“President Obama told President Karzai that because he has demonstrated that it is unlikely that he will sign the BSA, the United States is moving forward with additional contingency planning,” the White House said in a readout of the conversation between the two leaders.

Obama left the door open to a post-2014 force of American troops that could continue to train and advise the Afghan National Security Forces, the White House said, but the president appeared to make clear that his patience with Karzai is all but exhausted.

“Should we have a BSA and a willing and committed partner in the Afghan government, a limited post-2014 mission focused on training, advising and assisting Afghan forces and going after the remnants of core Al Qaeda could be in the interests of the United States and Afghanistan,” the White House said. “Therefore, we will leave open the possibility of concluding a BSA with Afghanistan later this year. However, the longer we go without a BSA, the more challenging it will be to plan and execute any U.S. mission.”

Later, at the White House, press secretary Jay Carney told reporters definitively that no security agreement meant no U.S. troops would remain in Afghanistan after Dec. 31.

“Absolutely,” Carney said. “Absent a BSA, there will not be any U.S. troops on the ground beyond the end of the year.”

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had previously said he wanted to have a signed security agreement in hand by the time he traveled to Brussels on Tuesday for a NATO defense ministers’ meeting. Hagel said he’d execute Obama’s orders and begin the withdrawal planning effort.

“As the United States military continues to move people and equipment out of the Afghan theater, our force posture over the next several months will provide various options for political leaders in the United States and NATO,” Hagel said on Tuesday. “And during this time, DOD will still continue planning for U.S. participation in a NATO-led mission focused on training, advising and assisting Afghan security forces, as well as a narrowly focused counterterrorism mission.”

Carney told reporters that Obama and Karzai had a “fairly substantive” call and that Obama was “explicit” in delivering his message. Carney also said Obama talked about the security agreement with House Speaker John Boehner in a meeting Tuesday after Boehner and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) had both slammed Obama for ignoring the war in Afghanistan, the nation’s longest at 13 years.

“Over the last year, our commander in chief has often talked more about how we plan to leave Afghanistan than how we are going to achieve our mission,” Boehner said Monday. “We all want to bring our remaining troops home as soon as possible, but succeeding in Afghanistan is vital to our national security interests and our mission must take priority over any calendar dates. The president has an obligation to better make that case to the American people.”

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich) has argued that the administration should just bypass Karzai altogether and make clear that it would deal with his successor. The challenge is that with several presidential candidates, the likelihood of a runoff and no certainty Kabul’s new president would be any more willing to sign it, no one knows when a security agreement might be signed, even after Obama’s declaration Tuesday that the U.S. is willing to wait.

Levin announced Tuesday that he has scheduled a hearing on Afghanistan for March 10, featuring the top U.S. commander there, Marine Gen. Joe Dunford.

American national security officials have said the security agreement isn’t just essential to provide for a post-2014 U.S. troop presence. The other nations involved with the Afghan War also need clarity about their roles and missions — as well as the legal protections and other policies — before they can commit to leaving behind units of their own.

The Obama administration is depending upon international allies to share the burden for supporting Afghanistan in the long term. Kabul cannot afford its military forces as they’re currently constructed and although U.S. commanders say the Afghan troops and police are steadily improving, they continue to need help with key aspects of combat and preserving security.

“They have to be more than tactics,” said Lt. Gen. Mark Milley, a top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. “In order to sustain yourself over time, you have to have institutional systems that are in place where they can, in fact, replenish their forces, they can do personnel management, they can do budgeting, they can do intelligence operations, infuse all types of intelligence, where they can train pilots and conduct rotary-wing and fixed-wing operations.”

Milley also told reporters at the Pentagon last month that the Afghan army could conduct basic training and was good at small-unit actions but needed to establish the ability to remain a viable force over the long term.

“They’ve got to be able to sustain themselves logistically,” he said. “They’ve got to be able to get spare parts and run entire distribution systems, so vehicles and weapons systems and other pieces of equipment don’t break down. We’ve got to get their special operations capabilities, which are very good, but get them up to a very high level. You’ve got to develop a ministerial-level capability in order to do budgeting and planning and programming and those sorts of things.

A post-American security implosion in Afghanistan not only could waste all the effort building up the government, security experts warn, but also create ungoverned spaces that Al Qaeda or other terrorists could use as safe havens to plan an attack on the West.

Obama says a post-2014 detachment of U.S. troops would enable commanders to continue pursuing terrorists as well as helping the Afghans. But the Pentagon would agree to leave troops in Afghanistan only if they’re immune from Afghan justice and it has codified other policies about the nature of their presence there — plus lawmakers would not go along without a BSA, Carney said.

“It’s inconceivable, I think, to us,” Carney said, “that leaders in Congress would allow for a U.S. troop presence without a signed bilateral security agreement in Afghanistan.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misidentified Lt. Gen. Mark Milley.